French colonial policy professed gradualism to justify preserving rather than destroying African customs

Evidence

The population, attached as it is to its ancient customs and old traditions, thus sees with satisfaction that if we have taken it upon ourselves to bring them the principles of our civilization, we only wish to do so in a wisely progressive manner so as not to disturb their ancestral habits; [these are] themselves the reflection of a social condition that would be useful to improve but which it would be imprudent to destroy without a methodical transition. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 320

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Republic’s Impossible Embrace: How Universalism Turned Algeria from the Future of France into Its Undoing”